But 2019 will be a doozy – a sentiment that NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine highlighted after NASA’s recent Mars landing.

“Right now at NASA, there is more underway than in I don’t know how many years past,” Bridenstine said during a live broadcast. “It’s a drought, and then all of the sudden there’s all of these activities.”

Here are some of the biggest events you can expect from aerospace companies, government space agencies, and the night sky next year.

January 1: NASA’s New Horizons probe will fly by Ultima Thule, the farthest object humanity has ever tried to visit

The Moon will slip in front of the Sun, partially blocking it, for those who are in northeast Asia and the north Pacific Ocean.

January 17: SpaceX plans to launch its Crew Dragon spaceship for the first time

SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk, plans to test-launch its new Crew Dragon spaceship, sending it into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The vehicle was designed and built for NASA to help replace the agency’s space shuttle fleet, which was retired in 2011. The eventual goal is to get astronauts to and from the International Space Station (and forgo using Russia’s increasingly expensiveSoyuz spacecraft).

In this first flight for Crew Dragon, the vehicle will automatically dock and undock with the space station in orbit. But no astronauts will fly on board. Instead, the test aims to show the system is safe for two crewed test flights planned for later in the year.

January 20-21: Total lunar eclipse

Earth will block the Sun during a full Moon, casting a ruddy-red shadow on the lunar surface.

North and South America will be prime areas to see this astronomical event, since you can see the entire 5-hour-12-minute spectacle from start to finish (depending on the weather, of course).

The organisation first formed to compete for the US$20 million Google Lunar X Prize, but that competition ended without a winner in 2018. Regardless, SpaceIL kept developing its spacecraft and is now booked to launch on one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets.

The spacecraft will “rideshare” or piggyback into orbit alongside a much larger Indonesian communications satellite, called PSN-6. SpaceIL then hopes to rocket its lander away from Earth and attempt to put it on the Moon, arriving on the lunar surface about two months post-launch.

The launch appears to be scheduled for some time in January, which means the lunar landing could happen in March 2019. If successful, the mission would make SpaceIL the first private entity, and Israel the fourth country, ever to land on the Moon.

January 30: India’s launch of Chandrayaan-2, the nation’s second Moon mission

The Chandrayaan-2 mission will be the second Moon mission for India and its space agency, called ISRO. The mission will have an orbiter, lander, and a six-wheeled rover to explore the lunar surface.

The mission follows ISRO’s first lunar mission, called Chandrayaan-1, which began in October 2008. In addition to photographing the Moon, the orbiting spacecraft shot a probe that slammed into the surface, kicking up dust to study from afar.

February 12 (and six more times in 2019): NASA’s Juno spacecraft flies over Jupiter

(NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin Gill)

The US$1 billion Juno mission reached Jupiter in July 2016 and has taken many stunning images of the gas giant since then. The spacecraft’s elongated orbit brings it past the planet once every 53.5 days in flybys called perijoves.

Perijove 18, the first of 2019, is slated for February 12. Mission managers have also planned six other such maneuvers for the year: April 6, May 29, July 21, September 12, November 3, and December 26.

February (TBD): OneWeb hopes to launch its first 10 satellites, which could compete with SpaceX’s all-Earth internet plans

The goal is to cover all of Earth with an internet service that is much faster, cheaper, and more resilient than any current service. The company has received approval from the FCC to build the network.

However, so has a lead competitor of SpaceX’s: OneWeb. OneWeb, a company based in London, plans to launch many satellites to establish service as soon as it can.

The first 10 are slated to launch early in the year, and 10 more could follow in August.

March (TBD): Boeing plans to launch its CST-100 Starliner spaceship for the first time

Like SpaceX, Boeing is working on spacecraft that will help NASA replace its space shuttle and ferry astronauts to and from orbit.

Boeing’s spaceship is called the CST-100 Starliner, and the first mission will also be without a crew – the vehicle will autonomously fly to the space station.

The vehicle’s next mission (and its first paid one) is called Space Test Program-2.

The goal is to launch a group of military satellites into orbit. NASA’s experimental Deep Space Atomic Clock will also be hitching a ride. The clock aims to bring unparalleled precision in timing to deep-space missions, which should improve communications and navigation.

On November 5, 2018, it flew past the Sun at more than 212,000 mph (341,000 km/h)– nearly 120 miles (193 kilometres) per second (3.3 times as fast as the Juno spacecraft at Jupiter). That’s fast enough to fly from New York to Tokyo in less than a minute.

But PSP will make two more flybys this year, each closer to the Sun and slightly faster than the one before it.

The goal is to crack two 60-year-old mysteries: why the Sun has a solar wind and dangerous mass ejections of particles, and how the corona – the star’s outer atmosphere – can heat up to millions of degrees (about 100 times as hot as the Sun’s surface temperature).

PSP will also zoom by Venus on December 26, 2019. The manoeuvre will use the planet’s gravity to draw the spacecraft into a tighter orbit around the Sun.

According to SeaSky.org, the Eta Aquarids are an “above-average” meteor shower than can produce one meteor per minute under a dark sky. The meteors are caused by bits and pieces of Halley’s Comet that Earth drifts through.

June (TBD): SpaceX to launch a Crew Dragon spaceship with two NASA astronauts – the company’s first human passengers

Each is a veteran of spaceflight, and they could be the first to fly SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.

“The first flight is something you dream about as a test pilot, and you don’t ever think it’s going to happen to you, but it looks like it might,” Hurley said in August.

July 2: Total solar eclipse

The Moon will fully block the Sun this summer, causing a total solar eclipse. To see it, though, you’ll have to be in the Southern Hemisphere.

The best locations will be central Chile and Argentina. Those willing to take a boat ride off the coast of South America and into the Pacific Ocean can also view it, as can anyone who hops in an aeroplane and flies through the Moon’s umbral shadow.

The eclipse will peak at 4:55 pm UTC and reveal the Sun’s wispy and mysterious corona, or atmosphere.

June (TBD): China plans to conduct a test launch of a new crewed spacecraft

China is not sitting idly by while private companies and other space agencies send people into orbit. The nation plans to conduct a test launch of a vehicle it calls the New Generation Manned Spacecraft sometime in mid-2019.

The test won’t send up any people, but eventually China wants to use the vehicle to ferry four to six taikonauts into orbit.

July 16: Partial lunar eclipse

Partial lunar eclipses are not as thrilling as total ones, but the events are still fun to watch. The edge of Earth’s red-orange-hued shadow will hit the Moon, causing part of it to be briefly darkened.

Late 2019 (TBD): China intends to launch a mission to the Moon that could return a sample to Earth

Chang’e-5 will be China’s most ambitious Moon mission yet. A lander will attempt to drill out and scoop up nearly 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms) of lunar soil, then rocket the grit back to Earth. This would give China its first-ever samples of the Moon.

Late 2019: SpaceX says it will conduct a test launch of Elon Musk’s new Starship spaceship in southern Texas

Elon Musk, the company’s founder and chief designer, and Gwynne Shotwell, its president and chief operating officer, have both said they hope to conduct the test launch of the spaceship on short “hops” in South Texas by the end of 2019.

The Moon does not orbit Earth in a perfect circle, so sometimes it appears smaller and more distant. If the Moon blocks the Sun during this minimum lunar size, you get an annular solar eclipse – when the Moon’s black circle doesn’t entirely cover the Sun’s disk.

The event in 2019 will be visible to parts of Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa, as well as parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.